Originally posted August 20th 2007.
Our first leg was fine until we decided to follow the wind to make a starboard rounding. A quarter mile off we got headed and blown well off. We tacked around and the wind dropped off. We should have followed most of the fleet for a port rounding. Squid was our only companion as we watched the rest of the fleet move off. About half way to the QB we got some decent wind which lasted us out to the Bell-B. We were more or less just racing against Squid jockeying for the lead. We rounded the Bell-B ahead of them and went on a close reach to round PI on the windward west side. Squid was able to gain on us slightly with more sail area (they rate 198 and were 251). At PI we hugged the windward edge of the island as they stood off hoping to shave off some of the distance. This worked okay but we got hit badly by the lee of the island. Luckily even though they gave themselves more room the wind died off and we wound up drifting. I did a little better at that and got ahead of him until the wind picked up about 20 minutes after. The race was then on for the finish line on a sweet beam/broad-reach. They were sticking with white sails so we threw up the chute (something we are getting a lot better at) and blew past them. We saw the committee boat cut anchour and we hailed them to see if they would wait for us to finish they said yes but hoisted and sailed out to meet us. So we were scored with our first two marks. I am not sure how we would have corrected if we started on time but we had a blast. That was our best race from a technical point of view and I am getting really addicted to this. Next time I will take out the 600lbs of cruising shit I have in the boat. I really liked the freedom that race afforded everyone. I wish I could have made the party but my wife was recovering from surgery so I had to get back home. Too bad she didn’t come on the boat she is usually the brightest one on my boat.
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